He tossed his water bottle onto the floor, quickly gathering up his camera from the passenger's seat. Hopping down from the jeep, he ran out beyond the thin periphery of the cloud.
He saw the ship instantly. It was closer than it had been, zooming in from the west.
The brilliance of the sun in the western sky was too great to distinguish the craft clearly. Hands shaking with excitement, Ford brought the expensive camera up to his eye.
Desert vista flew by as he swept the horizon for the enlarging dot. He found it quickly.
As he adjusted the lens focus, the thrill of discovery collapsed into deep disappointment.
It was not an intergalactic spacecraft at all; it was a helicopter. A single, stupid, common U.S. Army helicopter.
No. Check that. Two stupid Army helicopters. The other was much farther back and could only be seen through his magnifying camera lens. It, too, was flying this way.
Ford trudged bitterly back to his jeep. He tossed the camera onto a rear seat as he climbed behind the wheel.
Another disappointment in a day of disappointments. He had started the engine and was ready to drive on when he noticed the dark shape of another jeep in the desert below.
Probably another UFO watcher.
As Ford watched, a figure stepped from the jeep. A tiny speck from this distance, he could see the stranger walk around to the front of his vehicle.
The first helicopter was much closer now, flying fast. It seemed as if it had noticed the lone man standing in the desert, for it made a beeline for him.
Ford's heart thrilled. Quickly he gathered up his camera once more, thinking he had stumbled on some clandestine government meeting.
The telephoto lens instantly enlarged the man to the point where the back of his head and shoulders were clearly visible. His hair was whitish-blond. The visible skin of his neck pale. His head was upturned as he faced the incoming helicopters.
For some reason Ford didn't understand, the man had raised his hands as if in supplication. Probably some kind of code.
Excited, Ford began snapping pictures as the chopper raced toward the lone figure in the desert. It was difficult to judge from his angle at the edge of the dead river, but it appeared to Arthur Ford as if the helicopter was nearly atop the distant jeep. Dust swirled up from the force of the rotor blades as the aircraft settled into a cautious hover above the man. The lone figure had yet to lower his arms.
Ford took another picture. Click, advance. Click, advance. He didn't know exactly what was going to happen, but if it was anything like-
There was a sudden blinding flash.
Shocked, Ford blinked sharply, tipping the camera away from his eye.
Some intense, unexpected burst of brightness in the desert below had shocked his eyes. Wild streaks of blue danced across his field of vision.
He blinked again, trying to force away the strange ghostly afterimage. Still it persisted.
It was only when he allowed his eyes to focus once more on the helicopter before him that he realized the flash that had blinded him was still occurring.
The constant image was easier to endure. The electrical arc from the hands of the man in the desert slammed into the belly of the big helicopter. The sparking blue charge enveloped the metal fuselage, racing down the long length of the tail and up to the stabilizing fin blades. Sparks flew hotly off the tail blades, crackling audibly.
Ford watched, stunned, as the surge of electricity raced up the main rotor assembly and out across the multispar stainless-steel blades.
As the dark figure shot more juice up into the helpless helicopter, the snap of the current was overpowered by the hum of the rotors slowing down. They became plainly visible, cutting at the air more and more slowly until lift could no longer be sustained. At this point, the helicopter simply dropped out of the sky.
Crash-resistant features meant nothing under these battlefield conditions.
Deadweight now, the chopper thundered to its belly in a shower of bluish sparks. As soon as it hit the desert, the Hellfire missiles aboard the craft detonated, engulfing the helicopter in an enormous ball of brilliant flame.
A thick curl of black smoke rose like an angry cobra into the pastel-painted sky.
The other helicopter was visible now. It had flown in behind the first, hugging the ground.
As fast as the first chopper had moved in, this one came faster. It had none of the curious hesitancy of the first. Unlike the helicopter that lay shattered and burning on the desert floor, this one appeared ready for combat.
Standing back, away from the action, Ford was in shock. He could not believe what he was seeing. A real live humanity-versus-alien battle was going on under his very nose. It was everything he had ever dreamed of. And if Arthur Ford had anything to say about it, he was going to be in the thick of things.
Flinging his camera into the jeep, he jumped behind the wheel. Leaving a huge plume of dust in his wake, Ford peeled off, bouncing crazily down toward the arena of intergalactic combat below.
ELIZU ROOTE WATCHED the second Apache tear across the desert toward him.
He had guessed correctly. Although he wasn't possessed with a great military mind, he still had an advantage. He knew Ironbutt Chesterfield was no great thinker, either. Obviously he knew the general all too well.
Chesterfield knew Roote's last location was near the Last Chance Saloon beyond Lincoln National Forest. He would concentrate all his forces in that direction, not even considering the possibility that Roote might have gone south before turning toward the eastern perimeter of the base.
Roote had driven through miles of empty desert with no interruption.
Until the Apaches showed up.
The first chopper lay twisted in the sand before him. Sparks from the wreckage had set off a few minor brush fires around the crash site. Those parts of the rotor blades that hadn't sheared off at the chopper's impact with the unforgiving ground spun lazy circles above the flaming aircraft.
The Apaches were being used for reconnaissance, blindly sweeping the lonely miles of desert in search of a single man. It was obvious that the chopper crews hadn't been told what that lone man was capable of. If they had, the first chopper would never have stopped the way it had. And the second wouldn't be racing to its doom.
Roote could tell they were going to open fire on him. The nose of the trailing helicopter was tilted down slightly, the 30mm Hughes chain gun beneath the cockpit directed at the spot before the stolen Army jeep where Elizu Roote stood waiting.
Roote wasn't interested in prolonging this contest. As the chopper soared toward him, the fiberoptic relays that connected his optic nerve to the targeting processor in his brain locked on the big gun beneath the aircraft. He raised one hand toward the helicopter, fingers cupped to maximize the strength of the stream.
Roote fired.
At a command from his brain, conductive fibers along his skeletal system sucked power from the backup capacitor sites buried in his torso. Electricity collected at his five metal finger pads, congealing into a single blue arc that surged through the air in the direction of the incoming helicopter. The bolt never reached the Apache.
Roote knew all too well that electricity would naturally seek the shortest, fastest, most conductive route to the ground. Velocity compensators at his primary capacitor sites gave the extra boost his targeting systems needed to fire a controlled bolt at a given target. But he had drained those capacitors in his assault on the first Apache. Adrenaline had fooled his biological system into thinking that his mechanical system was at a higher operating level than it actually was.
As he watched in growing alarm, the heavy blue bolt of electricity turned a magnificent arc in the air, missing the Apache by dozens of yards. It blasted into the slowly revolving rotor assembly of the already downed helicopter.
Roote cut the power, staggering backward.
He felt the depletion all at once. His power was all but gone.
The helicopter continued to close.
Frantically, swaying wildly, Roote turned around.